New at ShopAndroid.com: Seidio SURFACE Extended Battery Case for Verizon Galaxy Nexus

 

Just a quick heads up for those of you who picked up the 3800 mAh extended battery for the Verizon Galaxy Nexus -- ShopAndroid.com now has in stock the Seidio SURFACE Case to fit that honkin' battery. It's made of a durable plastic and has Seidio's soft-touch coating and, most important, it protects your phone while using the larger extended battery.

And if you're still on the fence about the larger battery, check out our hands-on post for a look at how big it is.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/xYte0iEOdQU/story01.htm

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Climate of intolerance in West Bank, activists say (AP)

RAMALLAH, West Bank ? A Palestinian atheist who was jailed and beaten last year for expressing anti-Muslim views on Facebook and in blogs says Palestinian security forces are harassing him again, despite government pledges to respect human rights.

The blogger's renewed ordeal is part of a persistent climate of intolerance of dissent in the territories controlled by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, say human rights activists. They say they've seen improvements, including a marked decrease in the mistreatment of detainees, but that Abbas' security forces, who are partially funded by the West, must halt harassment and arbitrary detention.

Government spokesman Ghassan Khatib acknowledged occasional lapses, but said that in the past two years, "there's been great progress and success in reducing abuses."

Such promises mean little to atheist blogger Walid Husayin, who has lived in fear of the security forces since being released from a nine-month prison stint last summer.

"I'm sick and tired. My life has come to a halt," the 28-year-old Husayin said in a phone interview from his home in the northern West Bank town of Qalqiliya.

Since his release on bail, he has been picked up several times by security agents and held for days at a time. In one of those detentions, he was beaten with cables and forced to stand in a painful position on empty cans, said Husayin, the son of a Muslim preacher. Interrogators smashed his two computers and demanded that he stop expressing his views, he said.

Activists from three rights organizations said they witnessed an increase in arbitrary detentions in recent months, including calling in "troublemakers" for repeated interrogation, but said they hadn't yet collated 2011 figures.

Those targeted include loyalists of the Islamic militant Hamas, Abbas' political rival, and supporters of Hezb al-Tahrir, or the "Liberation Party," a puritan Islamic movement considered apolitical.

The increased pressure on dissent coincides with pro-democracy uprisings of the Mideast Arab Spring, but it's not clear if there is a direct link. Anti-government demonstrations in the West Bank usually draw just a few dozen or few hundred people, tiny compared to protests that toppled rulers in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia over the past year.

There appears to be little popular sympathy for those targeted in the crackdown, said Jamil Rabah, an independent Palestinian pollster.

In Gaza, ruled by the Islamic Hamas since a violent takeover in 2007, the Islamists appear to dealing even more harshly with critics, particularly on religious matters.

In both territories, those who violate social norms find themselves in the crosshairs. In Gaza, Hamas recently banned a televised amateur singing contest on modesty grounds because it included female contestants.

In the West Bank, Palestinian-American comedian Maysoon Zayid said her husband was roughed up and lightly hurt last fall after she mocked Palestinian officials in a skit. Witnesses identified the assailants as plainclothes security men, said Zayid, a contributor to "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" on Current TV, a U.S. cable show.

She said it was the first attempt at intimidation after years of West Bank performances.

"I feel like the Palestinian Authority is going backward," said Zayid, a resident of Cliffside Park, New Jersey. "That is not the state I am fighting for."

Blogger Husayin, who got his start with anonymous Facebook posts, caused an uproar in the Arab world in 2010 by mocking Islam's Prophet Muhammad, dismissing Islam as a primitive religion and sarcastically referring to himself as God.

In November 2010, he was caught in a sting that used Facebook to find him. In the West Bank, it's against the law to defame Islam or Christianity.

He was initially held without charges, but eventually he was accused of blasphemy and insulting people's beliefs. For four of the nine months of his initial detention, he was kept in solitary confinement. He told the New York-based Human Rights Watch that he was shackled for long periods and so harshly beaten that he vomited blood. After his release on bail in August, a court gave him a three-year suspended sentence.

Husayin returned home to his conservative Muslim family, rarely venturing out. He said his family is ashamed of what people might say about him, because of his unorthodox views. Husayin said he doesn't want people to see him either ? he still fears vigilante retribution.

The blogger wouldn't allow reporters to visit, saying he feared it would inflame family tensions.

Adnan Damiri, a spokesman for the Palestinian security forces, said he was not aware of harassment against Husayin.

"It isn't acceptable to summon somebody for ideological reasons. I am prepared to deal with this case," he said.

Khatib, the government spokesman, portrayed attempts to stifle dissent as growing pains. "We can promise that in 2012, we will have progress from last year. We are building a state, and there are difficulties in doing that," he said.

While the blogger's "crime" is unusual in the West Bank, his arbitrary detention fits a pattern, activists from three human rights groups said. Shawan Jabarin of the rights group al-Haq said he was aware of hundreds of arbitrary detentions in the past few months.

The bulk of those detained are Hamas supporters.

"We haven't seen tremendous improvement in rights and freedoms," said Randa Siniora of the Independent Commission for Human Rights.

The worst abuses receded over the past two years, like torture of political activists and lengthy detentions, the activists said, and the practice of trying civilians in military courts has largely stopped, they said.

Damiri, the police spokesman, said lessons have been learned.

"There are individual cases of abuse, but we don't have a culture of revenge," he said.

Rights activists say it's too soon to speak of a major shift in attitude.

"There's a lack of accountability, a lack of laws enshrining rights," said Jabarin. "We can't talk about a culture of institutions and the rule of law."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mideast/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120129/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_palestinians_stifling_dissent

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Cell Therapeutics withdraws cancer drug application (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? Cell Therapeutics Inc said on Monday it has voluntarily withdrawn the marketing application for its cancer drug, sending its shares down 17 percent before the bell.

The company said it withdrew the application as it needed additional time to prepare for the review of the drug, Pixuvri, designed as a treatment for relapsed or refractory aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in patients who failed two or more lines of prior therapy.

Cell Therapeutics said it had requested the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to reschedule the drug's review date prior to the withdrawal, but the health regulator was unable to accommodate the request.

The company plans to resubmit the application later this year.

Shares of the Seattle-based company were down 17 percent at $1.13 in premarket trade. They closed at $1.33 on Friday on the Nasdaq.

(Reporting by Kavyanjali Kaushik in Bangalore; Editing by Supriya Kurane)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/cancer/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120130/hl_nm/us_celltherapeutics

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Anyone? Ferris Bueller returning ... to TV

?

A YouTube tease had some fans hoping that a sequel might be in the works for the hit movie ?Ferris Bueller?s Day Off,? but as it turns out the short clip was posted to plug a Honda commercial featuring actor Matthew Broderick set to air during the Super Bowl on Feb. 5.

Excited to see Ferris again? Share you thoughts on Facebook.

Related content:

Source: http://todayentertainment.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/28/10258767-anyone-anyone-ferris-bueller-returning-to-tv

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Study Shows Inverse Link Between Brain Games and Alzheimer's Disease (ContributorNetwork)

A clinical study published Monday in the online edition of the Archives of Neurology is the first of its kind to link participation in reading, brain games and writing with a decreased production of a special protein whose presence has been linked to Alzheimer's disease.

Synopsis of Clinical Study

Three groups of study participants were observed and tested periodically over a five year period: Group One: 65 healthy individuals, mean age of 76.1 years; Group Two: 10 individuals diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease; and Group Three: The control group, 11 individuals with a mean age of 24.5 years, as noted in the Archives of Neurology.

Conclusions reached by the study panel were that people who were involved in the greatest levels of cognitive activities in the early and middle parts of their lifespans were the least likely to have the brain deposits of amyloid.

Although the physical activity of the participants were not observed during this study, researchers inferred that many people who choose a lifestyle involving cognitive activities also participate in a lifestyle that includes physical activity. Based on this inference, researchers extrapolated that both cognitive and physical activity throughout the lifespan contribute to fewer deposits of amyloid in the brain.

Acceptance of Amyloid Deposits in Brain Being Associated with Alzheimer's Disease

A study published June 2011 in the Annals of Neurology speaks to the association of amyloid deposits in the brain, along with subsequent atrophy, in Alzheimer's disease. Study authors noted that the deposits and some brain atrophy were present even before cognitive symptoms such as memory loss are evident.

The Alzheimer's Association published an entry commenting on the validity of this study, commenting that it was well conducted and controlled research using the most up-to-date techniques in brain imaging. The association concurred with the findings.

Known Prevention and Treatment of Amyloid Brain Deposits

MedlinePlus, a service of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, explains that the cause of amyloid brain deposits is unknown -- as well as the treatment of the deposits. Until future research can reveal more information in this area, the current findings that point to cognitive and physical activity as ways to stave off these protein deposits provide an avenue of hope.

What This Study Means to Baby Boomers

As ABCNews.com reports, Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia after age 60. Although not conclusively proven, it is currently thought that amyloid deposits in the brain lead to the development of the dreaded disease.

While baby boomers and their seniors cannot turn back the clock to change lifestyle factors in their early lives, they can make lifestyle choices now -- to participate in cognitive activities such as reading, writing and playing various games and to participate in regular physical activity -- that may decrease their chances of developing Alzheimer's disease.

Smack dab in the middle of the baby boomer generation, L.L. Woodard is a proud resident of "The Red Man" state. With what he hopes is an everyman's view of life's concerns both in his state and throughout the nation, Woodard presents facts and opinions based on common-sense solutions.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/seniors/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20120128/sc_ac/10877643_study_shows_inverse_link_between_brain_games_and_alzheimers_disease

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Animal Shelter Employees Abandon Pets, Leave Them Starving And ...

When the owners of the?Purple Hearted Puppies Animal Rescue Center in Summerdale, Alabama took a long vacation, they hired outside help to care for nearly two hundred animals. Unfortunately, that hired help never arrived, and an outside agency was forced to take over the operation.

Speaking to WKRG, animal control expert?Deneen Balistere, who has worked with rescue animals for twenty years, said of the shelters conditions, ?They warned me what it was going to?be like.? It?s the worst I?ve ever seen.? ?Among the animals left to die were more than two hundred dogs, various cats, and two horses.

According to authorities, at least twenty animals were found dead when the shelter was raided, and Deneen says they are now in need of ?food, blankets, help, donations anything to save these dogs.?

The animals were left without food or water for nearly two weeks, and authorities say some of the dogs resorted to cannibalism to stay alive.

At this time, Roberta and Sharon Dueitt have been charged with twenty counts each of animal cruelty with dozens of more charges pending.

After hearing about the incident, more that fifty volunteers arrived at the?Purple Hearted Puppies Animal Rescue Center to help care for the sick animals.

In the meantime, animal adoptions are urgently needed at the center with officials ready to adopt out pets starting at eight o?clock on Friday morning.

Police, in the meanwhile, are still searching for other employees who work at the center with an ongoing investigation still underway.

Source: http://www.inquisitr.com/187276/animal-shelter-employees-abandon-pets-leave-them-starving-and-dead/

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Detecting detrimental change in coral reefs

ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2012) ? Over dinner on R.V. Calypso while anchored on the lee side of Glover's Reef in Belize, Jacques Cousteau told Phil Dustan that he suspected humans were having a negative impact on coral reefs. Dustan -- a young ocean ecologist who had worked in the lush coral reefs of the Caribbean and Sinai Peninsula -- found this difficult to believe. It was December 1974.

But Cousteau was right. During the following three-plus decades, Dustan, an ocean ecologist and biology professor at the University of Charleston in South Carolina, has witnessed widespread coral reef degradation and bleaching from up close. In the late 1970s Dustan helped build a handheld spectrometer, a tool to measure light given off by the coral. Using his spectrometer, Dustan could look at light reflected and made by the different organisms that comprised the living reefs. Since then, he has watched reefs deteriorate at an alarming rate. Recently he has found that Landsat offers a way to evaluate these changes globally. Using an innovative way to map how coral reefs are changing over time, Dustan now can find 'hotspots' where conservation efforts should be focused to protect these delicate communities.

A Role for Remote Sensing

Situated in shallow clear water, most coral reefs are visible to satellites that use passive remote sensing to observe Earth's surface. But coral reefs are complex ecosystems with coincident coral species, sand, and water all reflecting light. Dustan found that currently orbiting satellites do not offer the spatial or spectral resolution needed to distinguish between them and specifically classify coral reef composition. So instead of attempting to classify the inherently complex coral ecosystem to monitor their health, Dustan has instead started to look for change -- how overall reflectance for a geographic location varies over time.

Dustan uses a time series of Landsat data to calculate something called temporal texture? -- basically a map showing where change has occurred based on statistical analysis of reflectance information. While Dustan cannot diagnosis the type of change with temporal texture he can establish where serious changes have occurred. Coral communities have seasonal rhythms and periodicities, but larger, significant changes show up as statistical outliers in temporal texture maps and often correlate with reef decline.

A Case Study

Carysfort reef -- named for the HMS Carysfort, an eighteenth century British warship that ran aground on the reef in 1770 -- is considered the most ecologically diverse on the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary's northern seaward edge, but today it is in a state of ecological collapse.

Dustan and colleagues conducted the first quantitative field study of coral health at Carysfort in 1974. After a quarter century their studies showed that coral had declined 92 percent. The coral had succumbed to an array of stressors culminating with deadly diseases.

Using the well-characterized Carysfort reef as his control, Dustan calculated the temporal texture for the reef using a series of 20 Landsat images collected between 1982 and 1996. The resulting temporal texture maps correlated with the known areas of significant coral loss (where coral communities have turned into algal-dominated substrates) and they correctly showed that the seaward shallow regions have had the most detrimental change.

This novel approach to change detection is only possible because the long-term calibration of Landsat data assures that data from year-to-year is consistent. Dustin needs at least 6 to 8 Landsat images to create a reliable temporal texture map, but the more data that is available, the finer the results.

Dustan tested this work in the U.S. because he had a robust study site and because prior to 1999 coverage of reefs outside of the U.S. was spotty. With the Landsat 7 launch in 1999 a new global data acquisition strategy was established and for the first time the planet's coral reefs were systematically and regularly imaged, greatly increasing our knowledge of reefs. The Landsat archive enabled the completing of the first exhaustive global survey of reefs (Millennium Global Coral Reef Mapping Project, http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/news-archive/news_0031.html). Efforts are currently underway to receive and ingest Landsat data collected and housed by international ground-receiving stations. International partners often downlink Landsat scenes of their countries that the U.S. does not, so it is very likely that historic reef images will be added the U.S. Landsat archive during this process.

Carrying on Outside of Carysfort

Temporal texture gives scientists an entirely new way to look at coral reefs. A worldwide study could help managers locate change 'hotspots' and could better inform conservation efforts.

Ideally, after more testing, Dustan would like to see an automatic change detection system implemented to follow major worldwide reef systems. "There is no reason that a form of temporal texture monitoring could not be implemented with current satellites in orbit," Dustan says.

Because reefs are underwater it is difficult to grasp the extensive devastation being exacted upon them. Global temporal texture mapping could bring the ravages into focus.

The Landsat Program is a series of Earth observing satellite missions jointly managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. Landsat satellites have been consistently gathering data about our planet since 1972. They continue to improve and expand this unparalleled record of Earth's changing landscapes for the benefit of all.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120126224515.htm

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Egypt bans travel for US official's son, 9 others (AP)

CAIRO ? Egypt banned at least 10 Americans and Europeans from leaving the country, including the son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood, hiking tensions with Washington over a campaign by Egypt's military against groups promoting democracy and human rights.

The United States warned Thursday that the campaign raised concerns about Egypt's transition to democracy and could jeopardize American aid that Egypt's battered economy needs badly after a year of unrest.

The travel ban was part of an Egyptian criminal investigation into foreign-funded democracy organizations after soldiers raided the offices of 10 such groups last month, including those of two American groups.

The investigation is closely intertwined with Egypt's political turmoil since the fall of Hosni Mubarak nearly a year ago. The generals who took power have accused "foreign hands" of being behind protests against their rule and they frequently depict the protesters themselves as receiving foreign funds in a plot to destabilize the country.

Egyptian opponents of the military say the generals are trying to smear the protesters in the eyes of the public and silence organizations they fear will undermine their managing of the country.

Also startling is the military's willingness to clash with its longtime top ally, the United States, over the issue, particularly since the army itself receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington. The December raids brought sharp U.S. criticism, and last week President Barack Obama spoke by telephone with Egyptian military chief Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi to emphasize "the role that these organizations can play in civil society," according to State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland on Thursday.

The ban became public after Sam LaHood, Egypt director of the Washington-based International Republican Institute, went to Cairo's airport Saturday to catch a flight and was told by an immigration official that he couldn't leave.

"I asked her why I was denied, she said she didn't know. I asked how to fix it, and she said she didn't know," said LaHood, 36. An hour later, a man in civilian clothes gave him back his passport and escorted him to the curb, LaHood said.

"It's a dark signal for groups who are interested in doing this kind of work," he said.

LaHood's father, a former congressman from Illinois, is the only Republican in Obama's Cabinet. The elder LaHood declined to comment.

The IRI was among the groups raided last month, along with the National Democratic Institute and a number of Egyptian organizations. Both American groups, linked to the political parties of the same name, monitored Egypt's recent parliamentary elections. In the raids, troops ransacked 17 offices of the 10 organizations around the country, carting away computers and documents.

The Egyptian government said the raids were part of a legitimate investigation into whether the groups were operating legally.

Sen. John McCain blasted Egypt's handling of the issue Thursday, warning that continued restrictions on civil society groups "could set back the long-standing partnership between the United States and Egypt."

IRI and NDI officials said they have been trying since 2005 to register as required by law, but were left in legal limbo, never officially denied nor granted permission. Both groups continued to operate while keeping authorities abreast of their activities, they said. Many Egyptian non-governmental organizations say officials often keep their groups in such limbo to maintain a threat over their heads.

Sam LaHood said he was told by his lawyer that he is under investigation on suspicion of managing an unregistered NGO and receiving "funds" from an unregistered NGO, namely, his salary.

Two other Americans and a European with IRI have also been banned from travel, Lahood said his lawyer had been told. From the National Democratic Institute, three Americans and three Serb employees are also on the list, according to its Egypt director Lisa Hughes.

Hughes, who is among those barred, said she has been interrogated for more than four hours about her group's work and that she had planned to fly to the U.S. next month before she heard about the ban.

"I think we would be silly not to be concerned," she said. "We were concerned the moment armed men showed up at our office door, and this has done nothing to calm those concerns."

The State Department's top human rights official, Michael Posner, told reporters in Cairo Thursday that such moves could jeopardize U.S. aid to Egypt, one of the biggest recipients.

"All need to have the ability to operate openly, freely, without constraint, not based on the content of their work," he said.

Posner pointed to recent U.S. legislation that blocks annual aid to Egypt unless it takes certain steps. These include abiding by its 1979 peace treaty with Israel, holding free and fair elections and "implementing policies to protect freedom of expression, association and religion and due process of law."

"Obviously, any action that creates tension between our governments makes the whole package more difficult," Posner said.

The U.S. is due to give $1.3 billion in military assistance and $250 million in economic aid to Egypt in 2012. Washington has given Egypt an average of $2 billion in economic and military aid a year since 1979, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Egypt's military has been locked in a confrontation for months with protesters who demand it immediately hand over power to civilians.

Hundreds of protesters camped Thursday in Cairo's central Tahrir Square, a day after several hundred thousand people massed there to mark the one-year anniversary of the 18-day anti-Mubarak uprising.

Thursday evening, hundreds moved from Tahrir and rallied in front of the state TV building, beating drums as they chanted for the "liberation" of state-run media from the military's control. They projected video footage of soldiers beating protesters onto the building.

State TV has been a mouthpiece of the military, broadcasting its accusations against protesters. Activists demand it be restructured as an independent media institution.

"The media is still manipulated and projects the same lies," said protester Mahmoud Ragab. "We will be here everyday to let them know it is a revolution."

___

Associated Press writer Sarah El Deeb contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120127/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_egypt

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Russia launches cargo spaceship (AP)

MOSCOW ? Russia's space agency says an unmanned cargo ship carrying 2.6 tons of supplies and equipment has lifted off for the International Space Station.

Roskosmos says the Progress M-14M blasted off early Thursday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan atop a Soyuz-U booster rocket.

The ship is scheduled to dock at the space station early Saturday with a cargo of oxygen, food, scientific equipment and gifts for the crew.

The space station's six members include three Russians, two Americans and a Dutchman.

The decade-old station is orbiting about 225 miles (360 kilometers) above Earth and consists of 13 modules.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/russia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120126/ap_on_re_eu/eu_russia_space_station

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A slim race for best original song at the Oscars

FILE - Actor Bret McKenzie arrives at HBO's 59th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards after party, in this Sept. 16, 2007 file photo taken in West Hollywood, Calif. The race for the best original song Oscar is a slim one with two songs up for the honor, a first for the Academy Awards. Sergio Mendes' ?Real In Rio? from the animated adventure ?Rio? will compete with Bret McKenzie's ?Man or Muppet? from ?The Muppets,? despite having a bevy of all-star musicians like Elton John, Mary J. Blige, will.i.am and Pink in contention for nomination. (AP Photo/Gus Ruelas, File)

FILE - Actor Bret McKenzie arrives at HBO's 59th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards after party, in this Sept. 16, 2007 file photo taken in West Hollywood, Calif. The race for the best original song Oscar is a slim one with two songs up for the honor, a first for the Academy Awards. Sergio Mendes' ?Real In Rio? from the animated adventure ?Rio? will compete with Bret McKenzie's ?Man or Muppet? from ?The Muppets,? despite having a bevy of all-star musicians like Elton John, Mary J. Blige, will.i.am and Pink in contention for nomination. (AP Photo/Gus Ruelas, File)

FILE - Bossa Nova piano maestro Sergio Mendes poses for a photo in this Feb. 7, 2006 file photo taken at his home in Woodland Hills, Calif.The race for the best original song Oscar is a slim one with two songs up for the honor, a first for the Academy Awards. Sergio Mendes' ?Real In Rio? from the animated adventure ?Rio? will compete with Bret McKenzie's ?Man or Muppet? from ?The Muppets,? despite having a bevy of all-star musicians like Elton John, Mary J. Blige, will.i.am and Pink in contention for nomination. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

NEW YORK (AP) ? The race for the best original song Oscar is a slim one with two songs up for the honor, a first for the Academy Awards.

Sergio Mendes' "Real In Rio" from the animated adventure "Rio" will compete with Bret McKenzie's "Man or Muppet" from "The Muppets," despite having songs from a bevy of all-star musicians like Elton John, Mary J. Blige, will.i.am and Pink in contention for nomination.

Charles Bernstein, the former chairman of the Academy Awards' music branch, says he "personally was surprised" that only two songs are up for the honor.

In the past, the number of nominees for best original song has ranged from three to 14. Only up to five songs are eligible for nomination.

"I personally felt that there may have been more than two that I personally would have championed," he said in an interview after the Oscars nominations were announced Tuesday. "But it is a majority vote situation."

Blige, who co-wrote a song for the Deep South drama "The Help," said in a tweet Tuesday that she was sad, and felt like the Academy "is being mean" for only nominating two songs for the award.

This year, 39 songs were eligible for nomination for best original song, including tracks from Brad Paisley, Robbie Williams, The National, Zooey Deschanel, Zac Brown, Chris Cornell and others.

Members of the music branch can rank songs using 10, 9.5, 9, 8.5, 8, 7.5, 7, 6.5 or 6, and a song must have at least an average score of 8.25 to be nominated. If only one song gets that score, it and the song receiving the next highest score will be the two nominees.

Since two songs were nominated, it could mean that voters were unimpressed with this year's contenders.

"Each person is voting on a subjective impression ... so you'd have to go into the head of each individual voter to kind of know what it was that made them feel that any given song was or wasn't award-worthy," Bernstein said.

Bernstein also stressed that the songs "have to be written for the picture, and the judgment of its quality has a great deal to do with how it functions in the movie as well as how well written it is."

Bernstein, who did vote in the category, wouldn't say how many people voted this year, but did say that the rules for each Academy Award are carefully observed each year. He says the music branch will most likely take a closer look at the requirements for best original song after this year's results.

"It's very likely because there were two this year that the rules committee will probably take another look at it next year and make sure it wants to continue the same rules," he said.

Madonna's "Masterpiece," which won the Golden Globe for best original song and is from her directorial effort "W.E.," was not eligible for an Academy Award because "the song does not occur either in the body of the film, or as the first song at the end of the film," Bernstein said.

Mendes, who shares his nomination with Siedah Garrett and Carlinhos Brown, says "Rio" director Carlos Saldanha delivered the good news to him.

"I don't know much about the voting process really. I'm not an expert in that, but I'm so happy about me being nominated," Mendes said Tuesday afternoon. "I don't really know the criteria, but I can only think about celebrating."

Winners of the 84th annual Academy Awards will be announced Feb. 26 in a ceremony that will air live on ABC from the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.

____

Online:

http://oscar.go.com/

____

Mesfin Fekadu covers entertainment for The Associated Press. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/musicmesfin

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2012-01-25-Oscar%20Nominations-Best%20Original%20Song/id-f2254983a31240479087a832a1d9b720

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Women Can Take Steps to Prevent Cervical Cancer (HealthDay)

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 25 (HealthDay News) -- Women need to get recommended Pap tests, while girls and young women should be vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV) to protect them from cervical cancer, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists advises during Cervical Health Awareness Month.

Cervical cancer kills more than 4,000 women in the United States each year. Many of them could have been saved by routine Pap tests, which look for abnormal cells in the cervix that can turn into cancer. When caught early, those abnormal cells are highly treatable, according to the college.

More than 12,000 new cases of cervical cancer will be diagnosed in the United States this year, according to the American Cancer Society.

The good news is that the rate of cervical cancer in the United States has fallen more than 50 percent in the past three decades due to the widespread use of the Pap test, the college says.

Cervical cancer is caused by certain strains of HPV, a common sexually transmitted disease. HPV can also cause genital and anal warts and cancer of the mouth, head and neck, penis and anus.

Women can help protect themselves against cervical cancer by being monogamous, practicing safe sex and getting periodic Pap tests. In addition, girls and young women aged 9 to 26 should receive the HPV vaccine, the college recommends.

A young women should get her first Pap test when she turns 21 and continue having a Pap test every two years until age 30. Women age 30 and beyond who have three consecutive negative Pap test results can be screened once every three years, the college says.

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about cervical cancer prevention.

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Video: Snakes plaguing Everglades banned

It's now illegal to import four types of snakes that have been a scourge to the Everglades ecosystem. Federal officials have banned Burmese pythons and three other snakes. NBC?s Mark Potter reports.??

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Scorsese's 'Hugo' leads Oscars with 11 nominations (AP)

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. ? Martin Scorsese's Paris adventure "Hugo" leads the Academy Awards with 11 nominations, among them best picture and the latest director honor for the Oscar-winning filmmaker.

Also nominated for best picture Tuesday: the silent film "The Artist"; the family drama "The Descendants"; the Sept. 11 tale "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close"; the Deep South drama "The Help"; the romantic fantasy "Midnight in Paris"; the sports tale "Moneyball"; the family chronicle "The Tree of Life"; and the World War I epic "War Horse."

The nominations set up a best-picture showdown between the top films at the Golden Globes: best musical or comedy recipient "The Artist" and best drama winner "The Descendants."

"The Artist" ran second with 10 nominations, among them writing and directing nominations for French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius, a best-actor honor for Jean Dujardin and a supporting-actress nod for Berenice Bejo.

"I can't believe that a year ago I was learning how to tap dance and today I am nominated for an Academy Award," said Bejo, who is the romantic partner of Hazanavicius and in "The Artist" plays a rising big-screen star of the sound era.

The film could become the first silent movie to win best picture since year one at the Oscars, when "Wings" took top honors for 1927-28.

Because of a rule change requiring films to receive a certain number of first-place votes, the best-picture field has only nine nominees rather than the 10 that were in the running the last two years.

Scorsese, who won the directing prize at the Globes for "Hugo," picked up his seventh Oscar nomination in the category. After decades of being overlooked for Hollywood's top filmmaking award, Scorsese finally won the directing Oscar for 2006's "The Departed," which also was named best picture.

Among the nominations for "Hugo" are adapted screenplay, cinematography, musical score and visual effects.

Dujardin, the Globe winner for best actor in a musical or comedy as a silent-era star whose career goes kaput with the arrival of talking pictures, will be up against Globe dramatic actor recipient George Clooney for "The Descendants," in which the Oscar-winning superstar plays a dad trying to hold his Hawaiian family together after a boating accident puts his wife in a coma.

Other best-actor contenders are: Demian Bichir as an immigrant father in "A Better Life"; Gary Oldman as British spymaster George Smiley in "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"; and Brad Pitt as Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane in "Moneyball."

Pitt was preparing breakfast for his and Oscar winner Angelina Jolie's six children when he learned of his latest nomination, his third. He decided to make pancakes ? and anything else the kids were craving.

"Whatever they want," Pitt said. "I don't care how sugared up they get for school."

Globe winners Meryl Streep (best dramatic actress as Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady") and Michelle Williams (best musical or comedy actress as Marilyn Monroe in "My Week with Marilyn") scored Oscar nominations for best actress.

Two-time Oscar winner Streep padded her record as the most-nominated actress, raising her total to 17 nominations, five more than Katharine Hepburn and Jack Nicholson, who are tied for second-place.

Streep went two-for-four on her first nominations, winning supporting actress for 1979's "Kramer vs. Kramer" and best actress for 1982's "Sophie's Choice." But she has lost her last 12 times, and the Globe win for her spot-on personification of Thatcher looks like her best chance yet to break that losing streak.

Along with Streep and Williams, best-actress nominees are: Glenn Close as a 19th century Irishwoman masquerading as a male butler in "Albert Nobbs"; Viola Davis as a black maid going public with tales of white Southern employers in "The Help"; and Rooney Mara as a traumatized, vengeful computer genius in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."

"I am honored to be in company with such beautiful artists, and touched deeply by my fellow actors for their generosity in giving me this acknowledgment," Streep said.

Octavia Spencer's win at the Globes as supporting-actress for "The Help," in which she plays a fiery maid whose mouth continually gets her in trouble, could give her front-runner status for the same prize at the Oscars. The same may hold true for supporting-actor nominee Christopher Plummer, who won a Globe for his role as an elderly dad coming out as gay in "Beginners."

An esteemed film and stage actor, Plummer went most of his 60-year career unacknowledged at the Oscars until earning a supporting-actor nomination two years ago as Leo Tolstoy in "The Last Station." If he wins this time, the 82-year-old Plummer would become the oldest acting recipient ever; Jessica Tandy now holds that position for her best-actress win in "Driving Miss Daisy" at age 80.

Also in contention for supporting actor: Kenneth Branagh as Laurence Olivier in "My Week with Marilyn"; Jonah Hill as a statistics whiz in "Moneyball"; Nick Nolte as a derelict dad making amends in "Warrior"; and Max von Sydow as a mute mystery man in "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close."

Also up for supporting actress are "The Help" co-star Jessica Chastain as Spencer's lonely, needy boss; Melissa McCarthy as a crude but caring member of the wedding in "Bridesmaids"; and Janet McTeer as a woman posing as a male laborer in "Albert Nobbs."

McCarthy is a rare funny lady competing at the Oscars, which seldom honor performances in mainstream comedies such as "Bridesmaids."

The nomination for McCarthy was a small surprise next to some other startling turns among the nominations.

Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock's "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close," which got mixed reviews and has not been much of a factor at earlier Hollywood awards, was a very unexpected best-picture nominee. There were gasps and cheers of surprise from the crowd of publicists and Hollywood insiders at academy headquarters when the film's nomination was announced. Von Sydow's supporting-actor nomination also was a surprise.

Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life" also had been considered a bit of a best-picture longshot. The movie, which won top honors at last May's Cannes Film Festival but was a love-it-or-hate-it drama among audiences, also picked up a directing nomination for Malick.

Oscar heavyweight Clint Eastwood's "J. Edgar" was shut out entirely, including for best actor, where Leonardo DiCaprio had been a strong prospect as FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover.

Other surprises included best-actor contender Bichir, who gave a terrific performance in "A Better Life," a film few people have seen.

Bichir beat out not only DiCaprio but also such actors as Ryan Gosling for two films, "Drive" and "The Ides of March," and Michael Fassbender for "Shame," who both had been high on Oscar forecasters' lists.

Also missing out on nominations were Tilda Swinton for "We Need to Talk About Kevin," Albert Brooks for "Drive" and Shailene Woodley for "The Descendants."

Along with Mara for best actress, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" had five other nominations but missed out on best picture and director for David Fincher, who had been among the favorites a year earlier with "The Social Network."

The best-director roster is loaded with past winners and nominees, including Scorsese for "Hugo," Malick for "The Tree of Life," Woody Allen for "Midnight in Paris" and Alexander Payne for "The Descendants."

"Midnight in Paris," Allen's biggest hit in decades, was the filmmaker's first best-picture nominee since 1986's "Hannah and Her Sisters" and first directing nomination since 1994's "Bullets Over Broadway." With his 15th honor for original screenplay, Allen also extended his lead as record-holder for most writing nominations (Billy Wilder is second with 12).

The lone newcomer is Hazanavicius for "The Artist," a critical darling that has stacked up an impressive list of honors and nominations at earlier awards since its debut last year at Cannes.

While Steven Spielberg's best-picture contender "War Horse" picked up six nominations, the Oscar-winning filmmaker missed out in the directing category, a prize he has won twice. His first cartoon feature, the Golden Globe-winning "The Adventures of Tintin," also did not make the list for best animated film.

Another animated snub was "Cars 2," the first feature-length cartoon from Disney's Pixar Animation that failed to earn a nomination since the category was added in 2001. Pixar films including "Toy Story 3," "Up" and "WALL-E" had won the last four animation Oscars.

This time, the animated nominees are "A Cat in Paris," "Chico & Rita," Kung Fu Panda 2," "Puss in Boots" and "Rango."

Winners at the 84th annual Oscars will be announced at a Feb. 26 ceremony aired live on ABC from Hollywood's Kodak Theatre, with Billy Crystal returning as host for the first time in eight years.

The most-beloved Oscar host of the last two decades, Crystal agreed to lead the show for the ninth time after Eddie Murphy bowed out in support of his pal, filmmaker Brett Ratner, who quit as Oscar producer amid the uproar over a gay slur he uttered in front of an audience at a screening of his and Murphy's comedy "Tower Heist."

Crystal's return could bump up the TV ratings for the show, which have been on a general decline over the last few decades.

What usually results in big TV ratings, though, is a blockbuster such as eventual Oscar champs "Titanic" or "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" in the thick of the best-picture contest. More fans tune in because they have a stake in the outcome.

There are no colossal films such as that in the mix this time. "The Help" is a solid hit, taking in $169 million domestically. So far, other best-picture nominees are well under that level, ranging from $75 million for "Moneyball" to $12 million for "The Artist."

___

Germain reported from Park City, Utah. AP Entertainment Writers Derrik J. Lang and Anthony McCartney contributed to this report.

___

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Fresh iPhone Apps for Jan. 23: Wordy: The Logophile?s Primer, Earth-Now, Triple Town, Niko (Appolicious)

-Start the week by expanding your vocabulary and learning a bit about climatology with today?s Fresh iPhone Apps. Wordy brings a fresh word of the day your way each day, with all kinds of dictionary and thesaurus information from multiple sources, and Earth-Now uses NASA data to show the state of various types of information about the planet on a touch-controlled globe. In games, freemium title Triple Town combines match-3 and city-building gameplay, while platformer Niko uses physics-based controls and tricky levels to challenge players.

For the word-loving iOS user, Wordy is a nice addition to your app library. Every day, the app provides you with a new word of the day, providing the definition, thesaurus entries, synonyms and other information.

You?ll get lots of vocabulary words out of Wordy, and the app is specially designed just for the iPhone. It packs information from lots of different sources, including Websters, The American Heritage Dictionary and The Century Dictionary, and is great for users who want to expand their knowledge of the English language.

Earth-Now (iPhone, iPad) Free

Education app Earth-Now brings all kinds of data about the planet to one place, casting it as a touch-sensitive globe that you can spin and zoom-in on. Earth-Now presents various bits of information laid out over the globe that show the state of the planet like carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere, global temperature, ozone density and ?vital signs.?

Earth-Now is full of climatology information and gets its information from science compiled by the Earth Science Communications and Visualization Technology Applications and Development Teams at NASA. It?s easy to get a space-eye view of the planet and see all the app?s information in just a few seconds.

Part match-3 game, part city builder, Triple Town is quite an addictive freemium title. The premise is similar to other games in the match-3 genre, such as Bejeweled.?You place three objects of the same type next to each other to score points, but in Triple Town, each group you make of an object creates a new, better object: grass groups make bushes, bush groups make trees, tree groups make houses.

The goal is to keep adding to your settlement for as long as possible by making groups, filling the grid with objects. If you get into a bind, you can use coins you accumulate through each round of the game to purchase objects you need, like extra trees or houses. Once you run out of moves, you can start all over again and see how big your city can become.

Niko (iPhone, iPad) Free

Niko is a platformer with some interesting physics-based gameplay mixed in. You play Niko, a cat-like character working to save his friends. You do that by heading through the game?s levels, leaping and sticking to walls and other platformers in order to reach things you can collect throughout the game. Your goal is to flip switches and collect as many coins as you can in order to track up a high score in each level.

A freemium title, Niko comes with its first six levels for free, with more available through an in-app purchase of $1.99. Each side-scrolling level has multiple paths through it, and you?ll need to explore thoroughly to discover each one?s secrets and get the best score you can on each stage.

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Home prices likely to keep falling in 2012

By Martin Wolk

The housing market ended the year on a positive note with strong sales in December, but a glut of unsold homes will likely push prices lower through much of this year, forecasters said Friday.

Sales of existing homes hit an 11-month high last month and the number of properties on the market fell to the lowest level in nearly seven years, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Unseasonably warm weather may have helped boost sales, but analysts said a strengthening job market and record low mortgage rates should buoy housing in coming months. Still, they were troubled by the high level of "distressed homes" for sale, including short sales of underwater properties or sales of foreclosed properties. Nearly one-third of existing-home sales were distressed last month, according to the Realtors.

In addition, one-third of Realtors said home sales fell through last month because of declined mortgage applications or appraisals that fell short of the required values.

"These strong negative undercurrents in the housing market and absence of support from strong labor market conditions will continue to trim home sales in the near term," said Asha Bangalore, economist at Northern Trust Co.

The median sale price for an existing home in December was $162,500, down 2.5 percent from December 2010. For the full year, the median price for existing homes fell nearly 4 percent.

"Home sales will gradually improve in 2012. ... However, prices will continue to decline in the near term, despite the better sales," said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist of PNC. He pointed out that many home foreclosures are stuck in the pipeline due to paperwork issues and will pressure home prices in the year to come.

"The market for single-family homes picked up in the second half of 2011, after being stuck near the bottom for nearly three years," said economist Patrick Newport of IHS Global Insight. "This pickup is real, but the road to recovery will be a slow one."

While the home sales pace was a touch below economists' expectations, December marked the third straight month of gains, adding to hopes that a tentative recovery was taking shape.

But a glut of unsold properties that is weighing down on prices and stringent lending practices by banks is likely to make progress painfully slow.

There were 2.38 million unsold homes on the market last month, the fewest since March 2005. That represented a 6.2 months' supply at December's sales pace, the lowest since April 2006 and down from a 7.2 months' supply in November.

The Realtors group noted, however, that the inventory of unsold homes tends to decline in winter.

Data earlier this week showed single-family home starts rose for a third straight month in December and optimism among builders this month was the highest in four-and-a-half years.

"It is very encouraging that the current phase of the recovery is being driven by economic fundamentals as opposed to being fostered by temporary stimulus," said Millan Mulraine, a senior macro strategist at TD Securities in New York.

Reuters contributed to this report.

{"contentId":"10201735","totalVotes":"5715"}

What are home prices doing in your area?

Existing home sales increased 5 percent last month, the highest pace in nearly a year. So, which investments may be the best bets as housing shows signs of life? CNBC's Diana Olick has the details.

Source: http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/20/10201735-housing-ends-year-on-strong-note-but-prices-still-falling

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New coach Philbin will try to turn around Dolphins (AP)

MIAMI ? New Miami Dolphins coach Joe Philbin takes over a team that hasn't been to the Super Bowl since 1985 and missed the playoffs nine of the past 10 years.

Maybe that's why one of his predecessors, Jimmy Johnson, offered this tweet Friday: "Joe Philbin new Dolphin coach..good luck!"

The former Green Bay Packers offensive coordinator became the seventh coach in the past eight years for the Dolphins, who are coming off a third consecutive losing season, their longest such stretch since the 1960s.

The hiring was the latest turn in an emotionally wrenching month for Philbin, whose 21-year-old son recently drowned in an icy Wisconsin river.

Philbin had been with Green Bay since 2003, working as offensive coordinator since 2007. Coach Mike McCarthy called the plays, but Philbin put together the game plan for one of the NFL's most prolific offenses.

The Dolphins' top choice, Jeff Fisher, turned them down a week ago to become coach of the St. Louis Rams. Miami owner Stephen Ross and general manager Jeff Ireland then conducted a second round of interviews this week with Philbin, Denver Broncos offensive coordinator Mike McCoy and Todd Bowles, the Dolphins' interim coach at the end of the season.

"Joe has all the attributes that we were looking for when we started this process," Ross said in a statement. "Jeff Ireland and I felt Joe was the right choice to bring the Dolphins back to the success we enjoyed in the past."

Despite the Dolphins' woes of recent years, including a 6-10 record in 2011, Philbin called them "one of the premier franchises in professional sports." At 50, he's old enough to remember the 1972 Perfect Season.

"The Dolphins have a strong nucleus to build around," he said in a statement. "And working with everyone in the organization, I know that together we will return the team to its winning tradition."

Philbin, who has never been a head coach, first interviewed with Miami on Jan. 7. The body of son Michael, one of Philbin's six children, was recovered the next day in Oshkosh.

After spending a week away from the Packers, Philbin rejoined the team last Sunday for its divisional playoff loss to the New York Giants.

Ross fired Tony Sparano last month with three games to go in his fourth year as the Dolphins' coach. When the search for a new coach began, Ross said he would like to give the franchise much-needed stability by hiring "a young Don Shula."

Instead he chose Philbin, who has 28 years of coaching experience, including 19 years in college.

With Philbin's help, the Packers have ranked in the top 10 in the NFL in yardage each of the past five seasons, including third in 2011. A year ago they won the Super Bowl.

"A huge congratulations to Joe Philbin," Green Bay tight end Jermichael Finley tweeted. "No one deserves it more than this guy. The Pack will miss him!"

The hiring might give the Dolphins an edge if they decide to pursue Packers backup quarterback Matt Flynn, who becomes a free agent this offseason. Flynn set Packers records with 480 yards passing and six touchdowns in their regular-season finale. Philbin played a major role in the development of Flynn and Pro Bowl quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

Assistants becoming first-time NFL head coaches have had mixed results in recent years. The group includes the Ravens' John Harbaugh, the Saints' Sean Peyton and the Steelers' Mike Tomlin, but also three coaches recently fired ? Jim Caldwell by the Colts, Todd Haley by the Chiefs and Steve Spagnuolo by the Rams.

Before joining the Packers, Philbin was Iowa's offensive line coach for four years. The former small-college tight end has been an offensive coordinator at Harvard, Northeastern and Allegheny College.

Philbin will now begin assembling a staff. Bowles might remain as a replacement for defensive coordinator Mike Nolan, who took the same job this week with the Atlanta Falcons.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120121/ap_on_sp_fo_ne/fbn_dolphins_philbin

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Santorum: 2 rivals not electable over health care (The Arizona Republic)

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After NW storm, outages and flood concerns abound (AP)

SEATTLE ? A Pacific Northwest storm that brought snow, ice and powerful winds left a mess of fallen trees and power lines Friday as tens of thousands of residents without power faced the prospect of a cold, dark weekend and flooding became a top region-wide concern.

While temperatures warmed and the icy, snowy conditions abated in western Washington and Oregon, slick roads and fast-melting snow brought challenges for road workers, city officials and rescue crews. The region also faces more rain as swelling rivers led to the worst flooding some Oregon counties have seen in more than a decade.

"It's definitely a trial we get to endure," said Jeanette Donigan, who left with her family after their home in Turner, Ore., was surrounded by floodwater. "But earthly possessions can be replaced, as long as we got our children to higher ground."

The storm was blamed for three deaths. A mother and her 1-year-old son died after torrential rain on Wednesday swept away a car from an Albany, Ore., grocery store parking lot. An elderly man was fatally injured Thursday by a falling tree as he was backing an all-terrain vehicle out of a backyard shed near Seattle.

On Washington's Mount Rainier, a blizzard kept rescuers from searching Friday for two campers and two climbers missing since early this week. Just east of that region, about 200 skiers and workers were able to leave the Crystal Mountain ski resort after transportation officials closed the area's main highway two days ago.

Near Tacoma, three people escaped unharmed Friday when a heavy snow and ice load on the roof of an Allied Ice plant caused the building to collapse. West Pierce Fire and Rescue Battalion Chief Hallie McCurdy said they heard loud noises and got out just in time.

Meanwhile, the storm plodded east, bringing the first major snowstorm for the season to parts of the Midwest. More than 700 flights were cancelled in Chicago, the bulk of them at O'Hare International Airport.

Forecasters said the Northwest can expect more rain, mountain snow and winds for a week.

A 35-year-old woman who drove a Ford Mustang into 4 feet of floodwaters in Oregon's Willamette Valley was plucked from the roof Friday by deputies who arrived by boat to save her. It was one of a number of dramatic rescues in western Oregon, left sodden by as much as 10 inches of rain in a day and a half that has brought region's worst flooding in 15 years.

Interstate 5, the main road connecting Seattle and Portland, was briefly closed near Centralia so crews could remove fallen power lines. Amtrak trains weren't running Friday between Seattle and Portland, because of trees and other debris that fell on the tracks.

Northbound lanes of the interstate in Everett, north of Seattle, were closed much of the morning following a tractor-trailer accident. For several hours, the Washington State Patrol closed both Tacoma Narrows bridges, which connect Tacoma with communities to the west, because of large ice chunks falling onto the bridge deck.

In Seattle, residents were asked for help clearing the city's 80,000 storm drains.

Puget Sound Energy used helicopters to check transmission lines as crews repaired damage from Thursday's ice storm. Nearly 250,000 remained without power Friday night, including 239,000 PSE customers, mostly around Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia.

Much of Washington's capital, Olympia, was without power.

Gov. Chris Gregoire's office, legislative buildings and other state agencies in Olympia lost electricity for several hours before power was restored. The governor thanked repair crews late Friday by hand-delivering peanut butter cookies.

The storm was "a constant reminder of who's in charge. Mother Nature is in charge, she gives us a wake-up call every once in a while, this is one of those," Gregoire said.

Cathie Butler, a spokeswoman for the city of Olympia, said they were dealing with "the fallout from all of the heavy ice and snow on the trees."

Butler said that in addition to dealing with downed trees, limbs and power lines, the city wants to get snowplows out to clear primary roads and snow that is piled up on drains "so as it starts to rain this weekend the snow and ice have somewhere to go."

Nancy Kolnen of Issaquah was without power, and had to throw out food in the fridge and layer up to keep warm at night. By Friday, power hadn't returned.

"Well, going into the weekend, I'm kind of looking forward to (the snow) because it's nice if you don't have to drive in it, but if I get home and don't have power all weekend, I won't enjoy that," Kolnen said.

It was still snowing in the Cascades, with up to 2 feet possible in the mountains over the weekend.

At Sea-Tac Airport in Seattle, airlines were trying to accommodate passengers whose flights were canceled Thursday. The airport's largest carrier, Alaska Airlines, canceled 50 of its 120 daily departures Friday. On Thursday, Alaska and sister airline Horizon canceled 310 flights to and from Seattle, affecting 29,000 passengers.

In Seattle, Carly Nelson was negotiating an icy sidewalk on her way to Starbucks. Nelson has been frequenting her neighborhood coffee shop to avoid cabin fever.

"I'm pretty tired of it. It gets old pretty fast. All my friends are stranded in little pockets and you can't get together to go to yoga," she said. "I'm just looking forward to being able to go wherever I want to go."

___

Cooper reported from Oregon. Associated Press writers Doug Esser, Ted Warren, Rachel La Corte, Nigel Duara and Nicholas K. Geranios contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120121/ap_on_re_us/us_northwest_storm

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Schlumberger posts profit jump (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? Schlumberger Ltd (SLB.N), the world's largest oilfield services company, reported a 36 percent rise in quarterly earnings, beating Wall Street forecasts, but it warned that Europe's debt crisis could hurt economic growth and trim oil demand.

The International Energy Agency cut its oil demand forecast earlier this week, saying the possibility of a credit crunch in Europe could set off a recession that would cut energy consumption.

Oilfield service companies have benefited from strong crude oil prices, which have prompted their energy-producing customers to hike spending by about 10 percent this year, according to a survey by Barclays Capital.

Schlumberger said in a statement that its planned capital spending would rise by more than 12 percent to nearly $4.5 billion this year, but added that it was "building the required flexibility into our resource plans."

"This is code for throttling back on spending, at a minimum, if warranted," Simmons & Co analyst Bill Herbert wrote in a note to investors.

Schlumberger said its growth in North America was driven by business in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, where activity is increasing after the 2010 BP Plc (BP.L) oil spill brought drilling there to a standstill.

Offshore activity in Africa and land business in the Middle East and North Africa were also strong, the company said.

Still, recent price increases that had helped the onshore business in North America have slowed from the third quarter, according to Schlumberger.

U.S. drilling activity has exploded in recent years as the development of shale rock formations has surged. That has been a boon for Schlumberger and rival Halliburton Co (HAL.N), which reports its quarterly earnings next week.

That drilling has led to a glut of natural gas and pushed prices for the fuel to its lowest levels in a decade, raising expectations that such activity will decline.

Schlumberger's fourth-quarter net profit rose to $1.4 billion, or $1.05 per share, from $1.0 billion, or 76 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding one-time items, earnings per share of $1.11 topped the $1.09 that analysts had on average forecast, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenue rose about 21 percent to $11 billion, above the $10.8 billion analysts had expected.

Schlumberger shares were up 0.5 percent at $73.25 in premarket trading.

(Reporting by Matt Daily in New York, Krishna N Das in Bangalore and Braden Reddall in San Francisco; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

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Peace Corps pullout latest blow to Honduras (AP)

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras ? The U.S. government's decision to pull out all its Peace Corps volunteers from Honduras for safety reasons is yet another blow to a nation still battered by a coup and recently labeled the world's most deadly country.

Neither U.S. nor Honduran officials have said what specifically prompted them to withdraw the 158 Peace Corps volunteers, which the U.S. State Department in 2011 called one of the largest missions in the world.

But the wave of violence and drug cartel-related crime hitting the Central American country had affected volunteers working on HIV prevention, water sanitation and youth projects, President Porfirio Lobo acknowledged.

Monday's pullout also comes less than two months after U.S. Rep. Howard Berman, a California Democrat, asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to reconsider sending police and military aid to Honduras as a response to human rights abuses.

"It's a welcome step toward the United States recognizing that they have a disastrous situation in Honduras," said Dana Frank, a University of California Santa Cruz history professor who has researched and traveled in Honduras.

The decision to pull out the entire delegation came 18 days after a Dec. 3 armed robbery in a bus where a female volunteer was shot in the leg in the violence-torn city of San Pedro Sula.

Hugo Velasquez, a spokesman for the country's National Police, said 27-year-old Lauren Robert was wounded along with two other people. One of the three alleged robbers was killed by a bus passenger, Velasquez said. The daily La Prensa said Robert was from Texas.

The U.S. also announced it was suspended training for new volunteers in El Salvador and Guatemala, meaning that when existing volunteers end their missions, the operations end. El Salvador has 113 volunteers, and Guatemala, 222. The U.S. embassies in those countries did not respond to requests for comment.

The three countries make up the so-called northern triangle of Central America, a region plagued by drug trafficking and gang violence. El Salvador has the second highest homicide rate with 66 killings per 100,000 inhabitants, the U.N. said.

Honduras joins Kazakhstan and Niger as countries that have recently had their volunteers pulled out. The Kazakhstan decision followed reports of sexual assaults against volunteers. The Niger decision came after the kidnapping and murder of two French citizens claimed by an al-Qaida affiliate.

A U.N. report, released in October 2011, said Honduras had the highest homicide rate in the world with 6,200 killings, or 82.1 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 2010.

"Violence affects all Hondurans. It wouldn't be surprising if Peace Corps members, too," said Jose Rolando Bu, president of a group that represents non-governmental agencies.

It is most significant suspension of Peace Corps activities in Central America since the 1980s, when several Central American nations were torn by civil wars.

The Peace Corps had sent volunteers to Honduras since 1962, and around 1982 it was the largest mission in the world, according to the U.S. State Department. The U.S. sent more people to help after Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

Berman said in the Nov. 28, 2011, letter to Clinton that he worried that some murders in Honduras appeared to be politically motivated because high-profile victims included people related to or investigating abuses by police and security forces, or to the June 28, 2009, ouster of President Manuel Zelaya. The coup lead to the temporary diplomatic isolation of Honduras.

On Tuesday, a Honduran lawyer who had reported torture and human rights violations by police officers was killed by gunmen, authorities said.

Three men stormed into the office of Ricardo Rosales, 42, shot him dead and escaped, said Hector Turcios, the police chief of Tela, a city 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of the capital.

Rosales had told local press that officers had tortured jail inmates in his city.

__________

Adriana Gomez Licon reported from Mexico City.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/latam/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120118/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_honduras_peace_corps

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Will Android be the death of PCs?

Horace Dediu/Jeremy Reimer/Asymco

History of computer platforms

By Athima Chansanchai

In a viewpoint the author admits is "extremist," an industry analyst believes that if iOS and Android devices are considered to be substitutes for personal computers, then not only is the latter's market share going to dip below 50 percent, but collapse is also imminent.

Finland-based?Horace Dediu, who runs Asymco, which on LinkedIn is self-described as "a company selling software development and consulting services for companies interested in deploying mobile applications," published a blog post today?that might make some people's heads explode?? particularly those of us without a penchant for numbers. In that post, he charts "The rise and fall of personal computing," which compares PCs to Macs, iOS and Android devices in shipped units and market share.

In his last graph, Dediu talks about the integration of smartphones into the personal computing space.

I will concede that this last view is extremist. It does not reflect a competition that exists in real life. However, I put this data together to show a historic pattern. Sometimes extremism is a better point of view than conservatism. Ignoring this view is very harmful as these not-good-enough computers will surely get better. A competitor that has no strategy to deal with this shift is likely to suffer the fate of those companies in the left side of the chart. Treating the first share chart as reality is surely much more dangerous than contemplating the third.

Horace Dediu/Asymco

Market share, with data from Gartner and IDC

As the commenters below the post note, there is no inclusion of Nokia's Symbian or Research in Motion's BlackBerry; but in a world that seems increasingly skewed toward Android and iOS, Dediu looks like he's already made the leap.?

As he puts it:

The ?entrants? into personal computing, the iPad, iPhone and Android, have a combined volume that is higher than the PCs sold in the same period (358 million estimated iOS+Android vs. 336 million PCs excluding Macs in 2011.) The growth rate and the scale itself combine to make the entrants impossible to ignore.

Live Poll

Do you spend more time on your smartphone or your personal computer?

• 173604

  Smartphone. I can do everything on it, and it's with me all the time.

  22%

• 173605

  PC/Mac/other. I have a smartphone, but it won't be replacing my home/laptop anytime soon.

  78%

VoteTotal Votes: 2006

We've seen the addition of iPhones supplementing Macs and PCs at home, and Chromebooks arriving after Android handsets. We've also seen the rapid rise of Android, how its handsets have overtaken the iPhone in the U.S., and how its apps in the Android Market will close in on Apple's, but have we arrived at that moment when smartphones replace the personal computer? Take our poll and let us know where you're at.

More stories:

Check out Technolog on?Facebook, and on Twitter, follow?Athima Chansanchai, who is also trying to keep her head above water in the?Google+?stream.

Source: http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/17/10173984-will-android-be-the-death-of-pcs

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